I Was Fooled by the Powermat Commercial

Blinded by the Light: Have You Been Fooled by a Commercial?

I was stoked after seeing a commercial for the Powermat, a wireless gadget charger that claims to charge any of your electronic toys without wires, cords, or trouble just by placing your device on the Powermat — finally a solution to my cord-management problems! A few days later I saw the Powermat at my local Best Buy and considered forking over the $100 listed on the price tag for convenience alone. But then reality (and an explanation from the sales rep) set in: $100 is not the bottom line on this super charger.

The Powermat does exactly what it says it does: charges your cell phones, PSP's, smart phones and other gadgets, but it does so with the help of dedicated cases that have a receiver attached to the back. Bye-bye custom iPhone and Blackberry cases — you'll be rocking the Powermat case and battery pack (which sticks out on the back) from now on. What's more, each gadget case starts at $30, and you'll need one for each device you want to charge! For me, this meant spending over $200 just to have all of my daily accessories covered. I walked away a little disappointed, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been fooled by a gadget commercial before. Share your gadget commercial rants, or about the time you bought a gadget and it wasn't what you expected below!

I wasn't fooled by this one. I know that wireless charging is available now for reals, but it has such a short range that I knew this one would be mostly hype... kinda like the "plant stem cell restoration cream" commercial I saw. Looks like it's really awesome super technology, but there's a huge catch (in the Powermat's case, it's that you have to buy clunky, ugly, $30 cases, in the cream's case, it was that the stem cells were literally plant stem cells, as in, it was mashed up plant stems).
I have fallen for hype a lot before, like when I bought a utility to transfer my iTunes music off my iPod and onto a computer... before I found out the trick to it is just clicking the "show hidden files" option.